Antibiotics: Minimize Use

Please note that the following are personal notes from my readings. None of it should be viewed as medical advice. Please always consult with your physicians to determine what decisions are best for you and your family.

————————————————————————————————————————————————————————

“When my child was eighteen months old and suffering from his fourth ear infection and fourth course of antibiotics, my search for a better solution led me to Dr. Fuhrman. After one visit, we changed my son’s diet according to Dr. Fuhrman’s instructions, and Evan never suffered another ear infection.”

During the last ten years, the use of broad-spectrum antibiotics has gone up more than 50% in the United States. As newer antibiotics are developed and marketed to doctors, they too often dispense the drugs without a legitimate clinical rationale for their use. Although there are instances when the use of antibiotics is appropriate, misuse can do long-term damage to your immune system.

Antibiotics are designed to kill bacteria; they do not kill viruses. Unfortunately, that is not how they are typically used. Approximately 90% of antibiotics are given for viral illnesses, against which they have no value. Antibiotics are routinely and repeatedly administered by physicians for illnesses such as cold and bronchitis, which are viral, not bacterial. This use of antibiotics is inappropriate and dangerous. In one study, more than half of he patients who visited a physician in the United States with cold symptoms left with a prescription for an antibiotic.

Antibiotics can cause diarrhea, digestive disturbances, yeast overgrowth, bone marrow suppression, seizures, kidney damage, colitis, and life-threatening allergic reactions. The unnecessary over-prescription of antibiotics during past decades has been blamed for the recent emergence of antibiotic-resistant strains of deadly bacteria. Besides these potential risks, in every single person who takes an antibiotic, the drug kills a broad assortment of helpful bacteria that live in the digestive tract and aid digestion. It kills the “bad” bacteria, such as those that can complicate an infection, but it also kills these helpful “good” bacteria lining your digestive tract that have properties that protect from future illness.

Over 100,000 people die each year of hospital-acquired antibiotic-resistant infections. Antibiotics cause bacteria to mutate relatively quickly to develop resistance. The resistant bacteria can then transfer genetic material to nonresistant bacteria, causing them, too, to become resistant.

Nearly 1/3 of the dry weight of our stool is bacteria. Hundreds of different species of good bacteria play a very important role in your health by producing certain vitamins, such as B vitamins and vitamin K; they break down various fibers, and the produce other nutritive substances. For instance, these friendly flora make short-chain fatty acids (such as lipoic acid) and other nutrients that have antioxidant and immune-enhancing properties. In addition to these health-enhancing activities that enable your body to function more efficiently, these good bacteria secrete antibacterial substances that prevent the disease-causing bacteria from taking hold in your body.

Therefore, the presence of health-promoting bacteria crowds out and prevents the development of bacterial illnesses. When you eat a healthful, nutrient-rich, plant-based diet, you promote the growth of the right specifies of bacteria. For example, having a proliferation of the health-promoting species of bacteria is thought to offer protection against colon cancer. When you eat an unhealthful diet, it promotes the growth of microbes that can damage your health and body.

If you take antibiotics repeatedly when you are young, you further diminish the population of good bacteria that protects you against the harmful bacteria. In addition, the harmful bacteria become more resistant (harder to kill with antibiotics the next time).

Over 100 different helpful intestinal bacteria are lost with the use of antibiotics, which then give pathogenic (disease-causing) microbes and yeast the chance to proliferate and fill the ecologic vacuum created by the repeated administration of antibiotics.

Repeated use of antibiotics can set the stage for recurrent infections and turn what might have started out as a minor illness into a more serious disease with a more virulent bacteria at a later date. Then, if an antibiotic is ever truly needed for a potential life-threatening infection, such as a bacterial pneumonia, it simply won’t work anymore. People die daily from infections that were easily treated by antibiotics in the past; today the microbes are resistant.

What is generally not recognized, as to why children are chronically susceptible to so many infections, is their marginal nutritional status, which weakens their defenses. Breast-feeding for close to two years along with a diet of natural foods is the most effective way to keep your children away from medication in early life. It is not just luck that my own four children have never had, and those I care for in my medical practice rarely develop, ear infections and persistent bacterial illnesses.

Fortunately, the healthy human body has a tremendous capacity to fight and recover from diseases without antibiotics. The recovery may be somewhat slower when the body is allowed to heal itself, but the healing usually will be more complete. Not only will a healthier, better-nourished child be more likely to resist disease, but the well-nourished child is more resistant to complications and serious problems from the microbe.